The gospel according to Tom

I can’t find a transcript of the apostle Tom Friedman’s interview with his lord and master Obama, the video of which I posted yesterday in “Fatuity and fatwas.” However, the Times has published an expanded version of Friedman’s account online in “Iran and the Obama doctrine.” It captures key quotes from the interview with one exception.

The pending arrangement with Iran is Obama’s devoutly wished consummation of a one-sided love affair. Obama is blinded by love. While the object of his devotion treats him with contempt, Obama professes difficulty “reading” the Supreme Leader of Iran. He is encouraged by the Supreme Leader’s openness to the pending arrangement. He takes it as evidence of possible reconciliation. Love will do that to you. Just look at Friedman.

Obama’s higher wisdom as set forth in the interview makes for painful reading, yet this is important. Attention must be paid.

Friedman hits all the highlights of the interview but one. He omits his and Obama’s discussion of the Supreme Leader’s (nonexistent) fatwa against nuclear weapons from his expanded online account. For that, you will have to suck it up and go to the tape.

Citation of the fatuous fatwa is important too. It represents our Supreme Leader’s willingness to say anything in a bad cause, specifically including all the rest that the apostle Tom recounts.

When I say Obama is blinded by love, I’m being charitable, but this is the kind of thing I have in mind:

“[W]hat we’ve also seen is that there is a practical streak to the Iranian regime. I think they are concerned about self-preservation. I think they are responsive, to some degree, to their publics. I think the election of [President Hassan] Rouhani indicated that there was an appetite among the Iranian people for a rejoining with the international community, an emphasis on the economics and the desire to link up with a global economy. And so what we’ve seen over the last several years, I think, is the opportunity for those forces within Iran that want to break out of the rigid framework that they have been in for a long time to move in a different direction. It’s not a radical break, but it’s one that I think offers us the chance for a different type of relationship, and this nuclear deal, I think, is a potential expression of that.”

Through an arrangement that gives the Iranian regime what it wants, Obama envisions the prospect of “a different type of relationship.” We may achieve peace for our time.

The American people, however, bear no illusions about the attitude of the Iranian regime toward the United States. Indeed, it’s hard to miss.

The American people are not calling for the pathetic arrangement that Obama wishes to force down their throats. That is why Obama is doing everything within his power to keep the American people from expressing their resistance to the arrangement through their elected representatives.

The American people don’t think it’s a good idea to smooth Iran’s path to nuclear weapons. That’s why Obama conceals the nature of the arrangement in his remarks about it.

Obama’s arrangement with Iran lacks the excuses that explain the Munich Agreement. Whatever other explanations apply, they lack the salience of the factors that impelled Neville Chamberlain in 1938.

FOOTNOTE: Obama cites the Supreme Leader’s alleged fatwa at about 20:50 in the video of the interview (below). MEMRI now takes a sixth look at the case of the fatuous fatwa for slow learners in light of Obama’s recent comments.